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Monday, February 24, 2014

Welcome back, friends! If you want to start this bible study at the
beginning, check out our introduction. You can find the subsequent parts I and
II in the According to Dazz archives.

Instead of starting with a clip this week, I actually want you guys to
read this quick passage first; check out Genesis below.

Genesis 1:27-31

27 So God
createdmankindin his own image,in the image of Godhe created them;male and femalehe created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them,“Be fruitful and increase in number;fill the earthand subdue it. Rule
overthe fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living
creature that moves on the ground.”29 Then
God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth
and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the
birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything
that has the breath of lifein it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was
so.

31 God saw all that he had made,and it was very good.And there was evening, and there was
morning—the sixth day.

You have all that? Great. It is time for our
good friend Louis CK to lend his thoughts on all of this. Here is your clip for
this week!

Now
buckle up, because you have another passage
to read. Well, we are going to be doing a little something here called
comparing and contrasting, and to do that, you need two things (wow—rocket science!),
so suck it up. Here is John 1—many Christians would consider this “classic
Gospel”—kind of like the Dark Side of the
Moon of the Bible. It is one of the best-produced passages in the entire
holy book, and a great intro into an incredible world of thought.

John 1:1-14

1 In the beginning was the Word,and the Word was with God,and the Word was God.2 He was with God in the beginning.3 Through him
all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.4 In him was
life,and that life was the lightof all mankind.5 The light shines in the darkness,and the darkness has not overcomeit.

6 There was a
man sent from God whose name was John.7 He came as a
witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.8 He himself
was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

9 The true
lightthat gives light to everyonewas coming into the world.10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him,the world did not recognize him.11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.12 Yet to all
who did receive him, to those who believedin his name,he gave the right to become children
of God—13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a
husband’s will, but born of God.

14 The Word became fleshand made his dwelling among us. We
have seen his glory,the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full
of graceand truth.

Essentially, we have a story here told in
three parts. Let’s go in order:

Part I: The Ideal World

Look back at
that Genesis 1 passage. Life seems pretty great, right? God creates us with the
mindset that we would become masters of this earth, and live with the rest of His
creation in a perfect, harmonious setting. We would be a reflection of God
Himself, that is, we would carry out His original intention of being people of
love and compassion and grace. We were made in the image of God—crazy—and God
looked to us to reveal that in our behavior.

Part II: When we shit on the polar bears

The world that Louis CK talks about,
however, is something very different than what God intended. Louis CK shows how
today, we value things like expediency, convenience, and bacon over the more
important areas of life, such as, you know, taking care of what we all share
(i.e. the world). Instead of living out our lives the way God wanted us to live,
we have put ourselves first. As a result, the polar bears are brown, oil is oozing
all over the place, and God is looking down with his face in his hand going “What
the fuck did you do?!”

The world is broken. You know that funny
Internet picture of the dog who trashed his whole house while the owner stepped
out? We are the dog. We took the vision that God wanted for us and we chose to
ignore it. We did our own thing. Sometimes, we still do.

Part III: The Word enters the picture

I guess the first question we have to answer
here is “What is the Word?” Well, the
short answer is that the Word is Jesus, the Son of God. This passage refers to
Him as the Word for good reason—it actually comes from the Greek word “logos,” which is rooted in the idea
that the spoken word itself has tremendous power. Think of the creation story
up there in Genesis 1. Throughout that chapter, God speaks things into being—his
words have all the power. Jesus can be considered as the Word because of his
humanness. He is here to send us the message—literally, a verbal message—of God’s
love for us. Bam, origin story.

The key line is that the Word became flesh—God
became man. Is it important to note, also, that the Bible never says that Jesus
was made or created. Rather, the text is careful to say that Jesus was
begotten. The idea of something being begotten comes from royal blood lines.
Kings would beget a son, with the idea that one day, that son would become
equal to himself (that is, a king). Now, when you make something, you create
something that is different than yourself. God made man. We make things in our
kitchens. Things like that.

The Bible, though, says Jesus was begotten,
not made. That is to say, Jesus was someone who is the same as God. If Jesus were created, he would clearly be
something different, but he was not created. Fascinating.

But what was the big deal of Jesus being
here at all? Why did he have to come? Well, it was all in response to God’s
original intentions being broken by us people. The world was a place of sin and
despair and emptiness, and God decided that, to hell with it, he better come on
down here himself and help us figure out our problems. God needed to reveal to
us that, because he loves us so much, he was willing to give up his Son
(essentially, give up himself) to
save us from this broken world. Even though we shit on the polar bears, God
wanted to give us another chance, and we have this chance in Jesus, right now.

So as you go out this
week, consider this: what was God’s original intention for you? In Delta Chi,
we talked about being a brotherhood, a place where men could gather and support
each other and grow together. In some of the habits that we have now, we might
have lost some sight of that, but as a bible study, we were able to sit down
and bring the focus back to what was important. We may exchange harsh emails at
times and neglect to clean our chapter room, but at the end of the day we have
to turn back to the foundation of friendship, community, and bro-mancing that
brought us all together. You can do the same for yourself, for your family,
your friends.

The challenge of this
week is to bring yourself to look at God’s original intentions for you, and how
you might have gone away from that (what polar bear have you shit on?). Make a
commitment, something tangible and substantial, that will help keep you aligned
toward that idea of being created in God’s image. It might be challenging, but
think back to the Louis CK clip: do you really
want to be that person who God facepalms in front of?

Friday, February 14, 2014

Welcome back,
everyone! For part one of the Louis CK Bible Study, click
here.

Alright, this week we are going to be talked about some pretty dicey stuff, so first thing is first: watch the clip!

Right off the bat, let’s respond to
that and tackle the elephant in the room: I am definitely not ruling out the
idea that I might be capable of murder if it was legal. As a journalist, I
think it might serve one’s writing well to just have that experience on your
resumé. Now that we know what kind of
person I am (. . . or do we?), we can turn to the good stuff.

The passage this
week is shorter than usual—you can read it for yourself right here:

Genesis
16: 6-9

6 “Your slave
is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then
Sarai mistreatedHagar; so she fled from her.

7 The angel of theLordfound Hagar near a spring in the
desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.8 And he said,
“Hagar,slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.

9 Then the angel of theLordtold her, “Go back to your mistress
and submit to her.”

Wait a second—read
that again. Abram and Sarai have some problem with their slave, named Hagar, so
Sarai mistreats her (which, from what we know about the treatment of servants
and slave in the days of the Old Testament, must have been pretty awful to be
called mistreatment). Hagar runs
away, but an angel of the Lord appears to her and demands that she goes back to
her mistress and “submit to her.” That seems pretty awful, right? It certainly
does not sound like the God that Christians talk about—the God of love and
fairness and compassion. So what gives? Turns out, it is all a matter of
context, just like Louis CK discusses in our clip. Check out the full passage
now, with the original excerpt in red:

Genesis
16: 1-10

Now Sarai,Abram’s wife, had borne him no
children.But she had an Egyptian slavenamed Hagar;2 so she said to Abram, “TheLordhas kept me from having children.Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I
can build a family through her.”

Abram agreed
to what Sarai said.3 So after Abram had been living in Canaanten years,Sarai his wife took her Egyptian
slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife.4 He slept with Hagar,and she conceived.

When she
knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am
suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant,
she despises me. May theLordjudge between you and me.”

6 “Your slave is
in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai
mistreatedHagar; so she fled from her.

7 The angel of
theLordfound Hagar near a springin the
desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.8 And he said,
“Hagar,slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

“I’m running
away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.

9 Then the angel
of theLordtold her, “Go back to your mistress
and submit to her.”10 The
angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too
numerous to count.”

It might make a little more sense now, but
just in case, here is the Quick and Dirty.

So Abram (soon to
be Abraham) has this Sarai chick, who will soon be Sarah. Abram and Sarai were
promised a kid by God, but still did not have one for a while, so out of sheer
impatience, Sarai told Abram to sleep with their slave. Abram, with a total
frat move, totally does, and Hagar is knocked up with Ishmael (who, fun fact,
will eventually become the founder of Islam—pretty awesome). Sarai is pretty
upset about this, and treats Hagar so badly that Hagar runs away. Luckily, the
angel of the Lord tracks her down and tells her to return to Sarai, but not before he makes a promise that Hagar
will be blessed with a lot of descendants.

The difference
between the two passages should be stark. In one, the Lord seems cruel and
rigid, but when placed into the greater context of Genesis, there is a reason
behind the return—if Hagar trusts in God now, she will receive a ton of
blessings to come. What appears to be a negative in one sense becomes better in
another—just like Louis CK points out with murder. The societal context of
murder right now says that it is wrong and negative, but when placed into
another context where society is fine with killing, it becomes a positive
because you do not have to deal with your asshole kids all day.

The importance of
context is rampant throughout Scripture—this
is by no means an isolated incident. Google “messed up Bible verses” and
witness the insane power of context. You take a lot of this stuff out of the
source material, and it sounds really messed up, but if you put it in the light
it was meant to be read under, and the real meaning tells you something
different.

In Delta Chi last
week, we discussed some more practical things through the contextual lens—most notably,
we discussed drinking. Drinking in Greek life definitely has social value—it is
relaxing, fun, and opens you to new ideas and new people. The issue arises when
the line is drawn between drinking to meet people and meeting people to drink.
In larger society, drinking just to be drunk is heavily frowned upon, but in
the Greek system, it is totally accepted—different contexts mean different
attitudes and mindsets (just like murder in the Louis CK clip!). Our chapter
looked at how we are approaching drinking at this present moment—do we drink to
be social, or are we social so we can drink?

So in your life,
where does context define what it alright and what is not alright? Are there
things you view differently based on who you are with or where you are? I know
for me, it can be hard sometimes to see how different contexts—such as my
Christian groups and my fraternity—can overlap, intersect, or intertwine.
Ultimately, it seems consistency in your beliefs is key, but perhaps that is
the real challenge: consistency through context.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Welcome back,
friends! This is the kickoff of God is
Like a Shitty Girlfriend—we are excited to have you.

Alright, first thing you have to do is check out this week’s clip. This one is from the first season of Louis CK’s Emmy-winning television show Louie.

Pretty awesome,
right? For those of you who had trouble with that clip, Louis CK discusses the
story of Abraham and Isaac. It helps if you have the actual Bible passage to go
with it, so here is that too.

Genesis 22

Some time later God testedAbraham. He said to him,
“Abraham!”

“Here I am,”he replied.

2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you
love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah.Sacrifice him there as a burnt
offeringon a mountain I will show you.”

3 Early the next morningAbraham got up and loaded his
donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut
enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him
about.4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the
distance.5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and
the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his
son Isaac,and he himself carried the fire and the knife.As the two of them went on
together,7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lambfor the burnt offering?”

8 Abraham answered, “God himself will providethe lambfor the burnt offering, my son.”
And the two of them went on together.

9 When they reached the place God had told him about,Abraham built an altarthere and arranged the woodon it. He bound his son Isaac and
laid him on the altar,on top of the wood.10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knifeto slay his son.11 But the
angel of theLordcalled out to him from heaven,“Abraham! Abraham!”

“Here I am,”he replied.

12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to
him. Now I know that you fear God,because you have not withheld from me your
son, your only son.”

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ramcaught by its horns.He went over and took the ram and
sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.14 So
Abraham calledthat place TheLordWill Provide. And to this day it
is said, “On the mountain of theLordit will be provided.”

15 The angel of theLordcalled to Abraham from heavena second time16 and said, “I swear by myself,declares theLord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son,
your only son,17 I will surely bless youand make your descendantsas numerous as the stars in the
skyand as the sand on the seashore.Your descendants will take
possession of the cities of their enemies,18 and
through your offspringall nations on earth will be blessed,because you have obeyed me.”

In Delta Chi Bible Study, we do a little
something called the “Quick and Dirty” after our silent reading, in which we
summarize the passage in a very quick and dirty fashion (come on, you are
reading a Bible study written for fraternity dudes, what did you expect?). So
in that tradition, here is the Quick and Dirty on Genesis 22.

God asks Abraham to kill his son Isaac, and surprisingly,
Abraham agrees. He takes his son up to the top of a mountain, and is all set to
kill him when God steps in again, praises Abe’s faithfulness, and promises him
numerous descendants and a great legacy as a reward.

Not super complicated, but it does raise a
lot of questions.

1.Why would
Abraham agree to just up and kill his son like it is no big deal?

2.Why does God
double-back on himself?

3.What does
this mean for God and Abraham going forward? God and everyone else going
forward?

We can go through these one at a time. For
the first question, our group found it very strange that the Bible would omit
any sort of internal struggle that Abraham was feeling when God gave his
orders. Seems like it would make for some good drama, right? Unfortunately, the
Bible is sometimes pretty bad at giving us any sort of look into these people’s
feelings, and in this case, it seems particularly strange to leave it out. The
best answer the Delta Chi brothers could come up with here was straight-up
faith. The dude trusted God so much
that he believed in His plan all along. Never wavered once—even Louis CK
thought it was nuts.

Let’s skip to the third question (we can
come back to the second one in a minute). The promise at the end of the passage
is a pretty huge deal. God is basically telling Abraham that his countless
descendants are going to blessed with power, land, and influence for hundreds
and hundreds of years to come. It promises that God is going to be there the
whole time, making sure things go alright. It is another one of those “Chosen
People” moments for the father of Judaism (begs the parallel: is Abraham the
LeBron James of the Bible? Vested with great power, but both struggled early—LeBron
did not win a Finals for many years, and Abraham did the whole “screw your
plans, God, I’ll have sex with whoever I want” thing back in Genesis 16—then they
both made some great moves to Miami and a life of faithfulness, respectively,
and they now enjoy lives atop the NBA/father of three religions—I’d buy that).
Anyway, the deal with the covenant was to show how insightful God was about
this whole thing. If he is going to make a promise that big, he needs to know
he can trust Abraham.

The elephant in the room, however, is why?
Why even have this test at all? Just like Louis CK said, it was pretty shitty
of God to psyche old Abe out like that—what was the point? Abraham had already
been faithful for many years (again, except for Genesis 16—that pretty much
sucked for everyone). The Delta Chi brothers proposed something interesting:
what if God was doing some clever foreshadowing here?

The climax of the Bible, to Christians, is
the story of the Christ found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Essentially,
this is the story of a sacrifice—God sacrificed His son Jesus to save humanity,
just as Abraham was all set to sacrifice his son as well. We cannot imagine what
Abraham went through while he was carrying Isaac up the mountain, and I think
it is fair to say that when God looked down on Jesus as he was being nailed to
the cross, it was not all sunshine and lollipops up in heaven. Was God trying
to explain how significant the Christ sacrifice would be through the plight of
Abraham? Definitely makes for some interesting parallels between the Old
Testament and the New Testament.

Let’s bring it back to the clip. Regardless
of the Jesus tie-in, it still seems pretty extreme of God to ask a grown man to
murder his son. Louis CK was right, it is very shitty-girlfriend-esque to go
back and forth like that. No one likes a waffling God, after all. But what the
DX Bible Study found last week is that this “shitty girlfriend” attitude can be
extended to a lot of things in our lives. For us, it was our fraternity. Why
would you go the extra mile for something that admittedly lacks a ton of immediate
affirmation and acknowledgement? Likewise, it seems silly to chase after God
all the time when the result can be so intangible.

The thing is, God always has your back in
the long run, just like our bible study decided that DX always has our backs in
the long run. This house gives back what you put into it, and the more you put
into it, the better your experience will be, so even the times when you wash
the dishes alone or make a grocery run unannounced can end up paying dividends.
Upstairs, God is working to pay those dividends for you even when you might not
be ready to thank Him for it. In that way, maybe God is not such a shitty
girlfriend after all.

We challenged ourselves to think about the
things in our lives that we approach with the “shitty girlfriend” attitude, and
we sought to turn those into positives by thinking about the future dividends
in store for us. In our house, our chapter, Northwestern—whatever. Good things
have been promised to each of us, and with the Big Guy in the Sky, it will
definitely be worth it.

Peace.

Next
week in the Louis CK series: You Have to Clean Up Your Kids When You Kill Them.

Monday, February 3, 2014

My sister and I sat
on the couch and did our best not to make a noise. We clamped our hands over
our mouths and our eyes squeezed shut and you could barely hear the sound of
stifled laughter escape from between our fingers. We were in hysterics.

In front of us,
resting on her favorite mat, our dog Junie was having a dream.

Junie B. Jones had
always had the prime piece of napping territory in our house—a big, white,
cushy mat plopped smack in the middle of our living room. She loved her mat.
She would sleep on it all day if she could, and sometimes, when she found time
amongst watching three noisy kids and two other dogs, she would have a dream
during her snooze. These dreams were pretty darn funny.

Junie was always
running in her dreams. She would pump her legs and grit her teeth and try so
hard to just go go go. It was
absolute comedy to us kids, sitting nearby and squeezing pillows to our faces
until one of us just could not take it anymore and belted out a huge laugh,
waking Junie immediately and causing her to rise up and wheel around to check
if we were alright.

We always felt bad
then; we never wanted to wake her up.

We loved Junie a
lot. She died last week after 15 years of being the World’s Greatest Pet.
Fifteen years for a boxer—that is a pretty long time. It is enough time for a
dog to become your best friend, best secret-keeper, best pillow, best kitchen
buddy, best backyard pal, and best
I-want-to-be-alone-but-I-want-someone-to-talk-with confidant. The perfect pet.
There was no one better.

To be honest, there
are not too many times in a college kid’s life when you want to go home, but
last week, I really wanted to go back to Junie. Sitting in the hallway of your
dorm with your sister on the phone makes you feel far away from a lot of
things, especially the idea of your furry friend finally saying goodbye. The funny
thing is, it never occurred to me that Junie needed me—it just occurred to me
that I needed Junie. I needed a warm hug and a gentle tongue licking my hand
and a dry nose twitching up toward my face and two big old eyes wondering why I
was crying. In my hour of need, I wanted my dog. I know my sisters felt the
same way, and my mom and dad too. We are all really different people, but we
all had one best friend—the dog that used to smash and crash through the house
when she was a lanky puppy, and the dog that used to go room to room every
morning as a good old friend, just to make sure we were each waking up alright.
Junie was so good, so loving—she treated us like we were a part of her family.
I hope she felt like a part of our family too.

The hardest thing
to imagine is the empty space. A bowl on the kitchen floor without food in it.
The spot in front of the window vacant. A favorite mat sitting lonely in front
of the couch. The space under the table big and hollow—no one there to sneak
scraps of tortilla or smuggle bits of hot dog. Two other dogs missing their
friend as well. These things have always come along with Junie. She has been
watching after our house for 15 years—ever since we picked her up out of that
cardboard box and decided to take her home.

Coming home used to
be easy, because you had a welcoming committee of three crazy dogs, with Junie
as the chief coordinator of all the festivities. Now, I cannot imagine what the
summer will be like, and walking through that door and not seeing the best
friend I ever had coming over to just remind us that Don’t worry, I remember. It feels impossible.

Say what you will
about heaven, but I know that God has a special place for all of our best
friends. He has a special place for dogs who were loyal, and loving, and
gentle, and happy all the time. He has a special place where Junie can have
another bone, and go on another walk, and take another nap, because in heaven no
one cares if you pooped on the carpet or ate a sock or shed all over Mom’s
favorite chair. In heaven, Junie can do whatever she wants, because that is
what you are allowed to do when you take such good care of people.

On the day when
Junie would die, I asked my father if she was alright. He sent me a picture of
her. She was looking right at the camera, calm and peaceful and wise and
knowing, and right underneath the photo, my dad wrote, “A-ok.”

That is all you
need to know—Junie is A-okay now. I can see her running somewhere, probably
chasing some sneaky rabbit or squirrel, and she is so happy and so excited.
A-okay. Just running and running and running—she does not have to dream about
it anymore.